The poison dwarf’s grounded me for three weeks, and just because I didn’t jump to it and tidy my room when she told me. I wanted to go out and was in a hurry. The room could have waited. It’s so unfair. We really got into it. I told her I was tired of being treated like a child, and she said then I should stop acting like one, started rabbiting on about me being irresponsible, like I care. It’s her who’s the child, not me. She’s the school bully, always throwing her weight around, picking on me because she knows I’m better than her poxy daughters, just as my mother was better than her. Jealousy, that’s all it is. She wants to bring me down to her level. Well I won’t let her.

*** *** ***

There’s to be a Masked Ball at The Palais Discotheque to mark the New Year, and all the best people in town are invited, including our family. We each received a personal invitation. The poison dwarf says I can’t go as I’m grounded, but we’ll see about that. This will be the highlight of the social calendar, everyone who matters will be there, and I’m not going to miss it for anybody. Flagg’s got a cheek thinking she has the right to keep me away. The only reason she got an invitation is because she was married to my father. Nobody would’ve thought to ask her otherwise.

*** *** ***

The poison dwarf is a devious bitch. I knew that before, I just never realised how deceitful she could be. For a week now I’ve humiliated myself by sucking up to her, bringing her tea in bed and running little errands for her, asking her advice about things, as if her opinion mattered to me. I was even nice to the gruesome twosome, a real strain, believe you me, so that eventually she relented and said I could go to the Ball at The Palais if I behaved myself and got all my chores done, but then she gave me such a long list of jobs that needed doing nobody could possibly get them done in time, so I knew she didn’t intend me to go to the Ball no matter what she said. Well, this isn’t the end of it.